


...With Which the Waters Teem

by anomieow



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Blood, Creature Fic, Dubious Consent, Finger Sucking, Grief, Hand Feeding, Mermaids, Non-con breathplay, Oral Sex, Other, Praise Kink, Rape/Non-con Elements, Rough Sex, Sex Work, Violence, futuristic dystopian AU, power differential
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:28:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27855949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anomieow/pseuds/anomieow
Summary: A strange creature with a familiar face haunts the bay.Bingo square John Hartnell.
Relationships: Thomas Hartnell/Cornelius Hickey, Thomas Hartnell/Harry D.S. Goodsir, Thomas Hartnell/Sgt Solomon Tozer
Comments: 16
Kudos: 24
Collections: The Terror Bingo





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tom likes ghost stories best, the possibility of someone thought lost to the other world lingering in this one. Ghosts can be invisible, Tom believes, and don’t always make trouble, thrashing chains and gliding through walls and the like. Tom’s own personal ghost, a poor docker like himself, gone in his twenty-sixth year from consumption, is just good, silent company, invoked and dismissed at will. And as long as Tom believes in him, he’s not alone.
> 
> But it’s not ghosts that concern Tom tonight. He’s just seen something in the water, a thick shimmering flash of scale in the black tide at the end of the pier. It was like no fish he’s ever seen, and stranger still, he’s certain he saw too a flash of ruddy flesh—the swell of a shoulder—cleave the surface and sink again instantly. Maybe even the broad knob of a head.
> 
> “Well, John,” he asks his ghost as he approaches the pier, “What do you figure that was?” In the quiet—the soaked, slow beat of the waves, his own breathing—he figures through what John would say. A sea lion, dunce. Of course.

Tom had heard stories, of course. It was ritual for old men to weave yarns and young men to listen, and whether or not anyone believed any of it was of no concern to anyone. But Tom’s still part boy, part soft and fearful wonder, and though he keeps it hidden he indulges when he’s alone and especially after a few pints in thinking of the stuff of the codgers’ tales. Tom likes ghost stories best, the possibility of someone thought lost to the other world lingering in this one. Ghosts can be invisible, Tom believes, and don’t always make trouble, thrashing chains and gliding through walls and the like. Tom’s own personal ghost, a poor docker like himself, gone in his twenty-sixth year from consumption, is just good, silent company, invoked and dismissed at will. And as long as Tom believes in him, he’s not alone.

But it’s not ghosts that concern Tom tonight. He’s just seen something in the water, a thick shimmering flash of scale in the black tide at the end of the pier. It was like no fish he’s ever seen, and stranger still, he’s certain he saw too a flash of ruddy flesh—the swell of a shoulder—cleave the surface and sink again instantly. Maybe even the broad knob of a head. 

“Well, John,” he asks his ghost as he approaches the pier, “What do you figure that was?” In the quiet—the soaked, slow beat of the waves, his own breathing—he figures through what John would say. _A sea lion, dunce._ Of course. Since they were boys, John had been keeping his head straight. And he’s exhausted. He should get back to the crowded boarding house he shares with who knows how many, worm in a place for himself among the men already back from work and tucked in, but no matter how tired he is he’s often driven out to the shore these clear tepid nights to walk the silty margin between the lights of the city and the rocking nothing of the sea. It’s like he has to prove to himself that there’s more to him than hoisting goods all day. An aching spine, his time and his brother both traded away for scant coin. Were they rich, John might have taken a train to the desert, where the water runs beneath ground and the sun is golden pure. Tom’s seen brochures. But instead John worked til the end, worked til the blood poured from his mouth onto his chest and fists like a curse, and he rasped his drenched last hulked over a crate of china.

Tom walks haltingly toward the end of the pier and fishes from his pack a stale wedge of bread, browning meat tucked into a rough slit cut in it, and takes a thick bite. The dry bread sticks to the rough of his mouth and the meat—roast beef, theoretically—is so salty it almost stings. The water rides itself in roils beneath the pier and to the shore, curls back white-spined, and ebbs out again. He likes the rhythm of it and sometimes, when he’s very tired, he imagines himself lifted on the slow beat of the tidal clock and carried away; he imagines himself vanishing. He finishes his roll and wipes the crumbs on the hem of his coat. _Probably a sea lion,_ he reaffirms to himself, sitting down cross-legged. He should be getting back: he owes his mother a letter, and he’ll be wrecked if he doesn’t sleep. But he’s not ready for the fleas, for the stench of men and tallow. Though the fisheries further down the coast tint the air rancid, it is at least air breathed freely. And anyway, that sense of wonder and curiosity lingers. Even if it was just a sea lion, he’d like to get a better look at it. Biggest one he’d ever seen for certain. He turns his head slowly, scanning the dark water for anything out of rhythm with the waves.

But he’s distracted by a small, lone figure down the beach a ways. In the dark he can’t make out his face but he knows by the slippery fit of his coat and the way he walks like a rich man on holiday that it is none other than Hickey. Hickey, who goes by his last name only, works alongside him at the docks, but always avoids the heaviest work somehow. Tom knows what he’s after. Everyone knows what he’s after, but the last man who turned unkind about it got his gut slit while he slept. He lived, but never again spoke on the topic of any other man’s personal proclivities. Tom watches him approach from a long way off and thinks about last time: down beneath the boardwalk they’d done it. Brutal and quick it was, but worth both their whiles, the way Hickey feigned to court him beforehand and tossed him about during, and told him he was a _a sweet good lad_ when it was done with. Such a thing would be acceptable again, so long as Hickey meant nothing of the heart by any of it—as Tom was sure he didn’t. 

“I thought I saw something in the water,” Tom says as Hickey comes down the pier. “Big sea lion, most like.” 

“That why you come out here? Look at sea lions? Easier to see ‘em during the day, yeah?”

“Well, we work all day, don’t we? Anyway, I was just walking and saw it out the corner of my eye. And you, Mr. Hickey? What brings you out?”

He tilts his head, grins. He likes being called Mister—it’s like petting a cat. “You look cold, Tom,” he says.

“Not particularly, but if you’re angling to hold me you can.”

Hickey shrugs. “Easy game takes the fun out of it though, don’t it?”

“Fancying a bit of a fight then? I’m afraid I’m not your man for that. I’m a sweetheart through and through.”

Hickey sidles closer and, after a perfunctory glance around, seizes Tom’s soft prick in his hand. Twists, his fingers biting into his stones. 

“Quit,” Tom says, stepping back. “If you’re after something rough go on and find somebody rough. Sol Tozer, maybe. I heard he’s a scrapper.” Sol trades in what Tom only permits himself to come by honestly and scarcely, so he’s surprised when Hickey answers with casual familiarity. 

“Not no more he isn’t,” He says, fishing out a cigarette. “You hadn’t heard?”

“I keep my head down. You’d do well to do the same.”

Hickey rolls his eyes. Sensing his hands won’t be otherwise occupied any time soon, he lights up a cigarette and extends one to Tom.

“I don’t smoke,” Tom says a bit pettishly.

“Well. Anyway, Sol’s joined the choir eternal.”

“Was he — _sick_? He didn’t seem so.” _Sick_ , for Tom, means consumption. There are other diseases, sure, but consumption, being his personal bogeyman, is always his first instinct.

“Not a bit. Well—sick of this mortal plane, I suppose. Walked off into the sea.”

“...Christ.”

Hickey shrugs. His eyes are bright. “You are correct, however. He _was_ one for a rough tussle. I shall miss that cock of his.”

“Don’t be coarse.” What he means is: _Did you give coin for the privilege?_

“Did you ever see it? His cock? A beaut, and no lie. And anyway, those were the only terms on which I knew him. I’m sure he was a fine lad otherwise.” He takes a thoughtful drag. “Not that it would matter much to me.” He pauses like he’s waiting for Tom to say something, but when Tom holds out Hickey goes on, “You know, they ain’t found his body.”

“How do they know he’s dead, then?”

“Well, he ain’t been back, has he?”

Beneath the boardwalk’s cool and clammy but Hickey’s warm and clings around him, gentler than last time. He’s got a scrawny little prick, Hickey does, but he wields it well, and he’s not rough as he was last time. The only trouble is the way he talks: real disparaging he is, calling Tom a _stupid filthy cunt_ and the like. He could do without that but he takes what he can get. He works hard and talks little and he’s not exactly handsome. The decent side of plain, he’s always fancied himself, with a narrow little face like a worried kid. But you can get a good ways being plain, if you’ve got dash. Like Hickey does: but then again, Hickey’s not plain so much as strange, something of a nursery tale in those glinting eyes and that heavy nose, that soft red hair. Fey, luminous.

He feels Hickey glide his palm up along his throat and he freezes. “You’d make some man a fine wife,” Hickey’s saying, “sweetheart that you are.” Slowly his grip tightens until Tom can barely breathe, fetching just a little spoonful of air at a time. Just enough to keep his vision from going black. He tries to break free of Hickey’s grip but can find neither voice nor strength— _he’s wounded men for certain, would he go so far as to kill one for fun?_ Surely he’s just taking things too far, being as rough as he pleases, the goddamned brat, but Hartnell finds himself bucking and whining regardless. Can’t shake him, can’t silence him. Pitiful. He ought to be brave, to prove—ah, there, nearly shook him—but Hickey delivers a sharp elbow to Tom’s ribs, a brutal enough blow that he resigns and goes limp. “You’re right obedient, for one thing,” Hickey continues, a shake to his voice making it thankfully clear he’s near to finishing—“and not too strong, clearly. A man likes that. Say, how’d you fancy being my lass? Ain’t much on looks, but you’ve a fine enough disposition…” 

But then Hickey stops, tilting his head as he catches sight of something behind Tom. He shoves up off of him and stumbles backward onto his feet. Tom turns slowly, sucking in great gasping volleys of air as he does so, and sees what Hickey’s seen: in the far pitch-black corner, where the water laps at the rocks, two eyes gleam. They emanate a weak, milky light, as though frosted over with cataracts, yet they track Hickey’s movements as he turns to run. Then the thing lunges. Tom can smell the sea—salt and fish gut—and a ferric tang like blood as it flashes past him and tackles Hickey, knocking him onto his back. Its bowed, muscular shoulders heave with each gurgling breath. Smooth, the broad of the back is, well-formed down through the shoulders and arms, but the bones of the spine rise and meld toward its waist to form a kind of stumpy, vestigial fin. The beast’s lower half is like the body of a fish, a greyish-green that glints dully in the shadows. 

With a grunt, Hickey turns and curls, reaching for the knife he’s known to keep in his boot, but the thing— _the merman_ , Tom thinks numbly—anticipates this and glides his hand down to clasp Hickey by the wrist. And holds him there. Then he grabs his other wrist and twists the greenish gleaming bulk of his hips and tail to curl across his thighs. _Run,_ Tom’s brain orders his legs, but as in a childhood nightmare they are useless, as insensate as sacks of sand. He watches breathlessly as the merman coils its fanned tail-end around Hickey’s ankles and lowers its mouth to his, crossing one large hand over to clasp his neck. It’s a terrible mimic of what Hickey had done to him, except now the smell of blood thickens in the heavy air as Hickey’s screams are twisted down to a raw, continuous whine in his throat. Then silence. No, not totally: Hickey’s still breathing, sucking air noisily in through a slick of blood in his mouth.

The merman turns and drags himself on his forearms to where Tom is crouched against the post. As he raises his eyes to meet Tom’s, Tom recognizes the face of Sol Tozer. He opens his bloodied mouth and, with a neat inclination of his head, drops Hickey’s tongue at Tom’s feet.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn’t expect this to go in this direction either but here we are.

John had been friends with a disgraced sawbones by the name of Goodsir, and it’s to his little garret room that Tom tries to navigate now. The city’s a backwater built on shipping, a precarious rigging of walkways, ramps, and ramshackle buildings slung along steep cliffs on either side of the bay. Further inland, silent hovercraft shuttle those who can afford it back and forth through the membranous dome that encircles the capital, and it is from there Goodsir originally came. And though he has lived in Docktown (no one ever even loved the crowded city enough to give it a proper name) for going on twenty years, he still possesses the kind of fretful sensitivity not afforded to most poor. Hartnell suspects this delicacy to be a bit of an affectation, a way of holding himself above others, but he likes and—more importantly at this moment—trusts him regardless.

After the creature that was Sol had dropped the tongue at his feet it had turned and slipped back into the water in almost perfect silence, leaving Tom and Hickey alone in the quiet. Tom considered leaving Hickey to fend for himself, as surely the man would have done to him, but he certainly would have bled to death there and Tom did not wish to be responsible for that. So he’d knuckled under and dragged most of his weight up against him, pulling him to his feet. Hickey was nothing if not tenacious, clinging still to a rather vigorous consciousness even as his face grew paler by the moment and his dull eyes failed to track, and with all the stiffness of a sleepwalker he walked curled up against Tom, shivering and, every now and then, whining deep in his throat.

He brought him up the dunes and the stone steps to the street (if such a narrow hammering-together of creaking timber slung between buildings can be called a street), where he guided him into an alley and eased him down in the corner. It’d be quicker going, he realized, if he could tuck Hickey away here and retrieve Goodsir himself. He explained this plan to Hickey, who nodded without seeming to comprehend what was said to him. There were few about this time of night and in this quarter of town, but it would be simpler for everyone involved if no one saw Hickey until Goodsir did, and anyway, not recalling precisely where Goodsir lived, Tom would have to hunt down that particular stairwell leading to that particular garret room where a red-glazed window looked down on the brothel beneath. That was it—the red window. He recalls now glancing with shame and curiosity into the doorway of that brothel where men sold themselves to each other, and then glancing up into the narrow red window when John followed the line of his gaze with a slight scowl.

It is easier to find than he expected, for the window is, aside from the quiet but open brothel beneath, the only light along that block. It’s near three now, he realizes only after he’s knocked, but Goodsir has about him a look of owlish alertness when he cracks his door, and his smile when he recognizes Tom is a genuine one. Eyes downcast and cheeks red at having interrupted whatever strange business has Goodsir up at this hour, Tom explains only that he has a friend who is gravely injured, and asks if he will _please help, please, it would be a great kindness._ Goodsir pulls on his coat, grabs his kit, and follows him with no further questions. They find Hickey in the alley where Tom had left him, though he’s lost consciousness.

“Oh my,” Goodsir murmurs as he kneels and, with his thumb, levers open Hickey’s mouth. “My, my. I always knew you’d get yourself into trouble.” Then, to Tom: “who did this to him?”

“I found him,” Tom stammers, but he’s a terrible liar. “Just found him like this.” 

“All right,” Goodsir sighs, digging into his bag. “Say you did find him—who do you _suppose_ did this to him?”

Tom chews at his lip. He imagines trying to explain what he’s seen—he’d be hauled off to the mental ward, and he tells Goodsir so. 

“Try me,” the doctor says, drawing a little white wand from his bag and powering it up. It has a round, sharp-toothed little mouth at one end which puts Tom in mind of the fat little leeches that used to nest in the arches of their feet and curls of their toes when he and John played in the estuaries as children. The little wand whines as a row of lights, each paired with a small button, one by one wake, winking red before going solid blue.

“What is that?” Tom asks instead.

“It will stop the bleeding,” Goodsir replies, “and sedate him.” Holding Hickey’s mouth open, he thrusts the mouth of the thing to the macerated stump of his tongue and presses one of the buttons. The whining sharpens to a squealing pitch followed by a sickeningly resounding _thunk_ as the thing latches to what’s left of Hickey’s tongue. A juddering thrash runs through Hickey’s body—his spine stiffens, his head lashes forward, and his bootheels scrabble against the damp floor of the alley. His eyes flash open, dilated and panicked. 

“There, there,” Goodsir says, stroking Hickey’s cheek with a discomfiting familiarity. “Let’s find you a place to rest.” 

They carry him, stumbling, back to the brothel beneath Goodsir’s room. His appearance elicits no stirring about, no excitement. The man behind the bar glides over to them—he is exquisite, Tom has time to think, with dark hair slicked to one side and eyes the color of the sea, and he emanates an air paradoxically obsequious and menacing. He seems glad to see Goodsir but his expression turns to distaste when he sees who it is sagged against him. 

“He’s not permitted here, sir,” the man says.

“Do you truly think he’ll cause any trouble in this state, Jopson?”

“What state is that?”

“Someone’s cut his tongue out.”

“How perfectly ghastly. Let me see.”

“I advise we get him off his feet as soon as possible. You can gawk after I’ve left.” 

Jopson is not a tall man, but he carries himself with the slight apologetic slouch of one, paradoxically giving the impression of great, gangly height. His waist is trim and there are little traces of silver where his hair neatly meets his temple, the nape of his neck. He could be twenty-five or he could be forty, and Tom cannot look away despite the fact that Jopson has completely failed to acknowledge his existence. They lift Hickey, dead and dozing weight now, by ankle and shoulder and carry him into a narrow, high-ceilinged room, lush and claustrophobic with sumptuous furnishings and dark wood, rich blue wallpaper twined with flowers in muted shades of blood and milk. 

“Have you got somewhere to stay?” Goodsir asks as they stand in the narrow stairwell. It is that strange hour where dawn has not yet begun to shift the colors of things but is felt, somehow—a blue, chill charge in the air.

“A boarding house,” Tom answers. Then, anticipating the invitation and not sure what such an invitation would entail, he adds, “and I’ll probably just go on to work anyhow—due in two hours.”

“Work, after a night like this? At least come up for a coffee, then.”

Goodsir’s room is cluttered but neat, unchanged from when he used to come with his brother. They had been good friends, and then some obscure falling out—John would not talk about it. 

“I was very sorry to hear about John,” Goodsir tells him now, setting up a game of chess. He has not invited him to play but gazes thoughtfully at the board as he speaks. 

“Yes,” Tom says. “I miss him something awful.”

“Consumption, was it?”

Tom nods.

“You know, they suffered terribly from—tuberculosis, actually, they called it then, though it was a milder and slower form of it—a long time ago. Then we had all but eradicated it. But in these backwaters, filthy as they are—a dangerous contagion, you know.”

“I know. I’m clear.”

Goodsir nods. He is playing chess against himself, with a rather distracted air, glancing up every now and then at Tom on his sofa, cupping his hot coffee in his hands. It’s the best he’s had in a long time, strong and mildly nutty with a splash of real milk, and he could nearly die with how wonderful it is. But his lids are heavy regardless, and he longs to lie down. It’s been a long night, and a long day of grunt work the day before, and all his exhaustion rushes to the surface in a surge. He wonders if Goodsir would mind if—just for a moment—he sets the coffee on the floor with a loud yawn, and then Goodsir is standing before him, gazing down at him. 

Tom studies his face. Thick-lashed coppery hazel eyes, a full-lipped fretful little mouth. Spectacles perched low on his face, unkempt curls falling over his brow. It’s funny: he has at first glance an intricately expressive face, but in this moment it is curiously impassive, illegible but for a kind of pain in his eyes. He takes Tom’s chin in his hand, stroking his scant blond beard and mapping the soft, narrow line of his jaw with his thumb. It is an affectionate, soft touch, clear in its intentions but no less warming for that. He does not want Goodsir: not in the way he wants him. But he wants this gentle touch, unaccustomed as he is to the reverence in it, the sweetness; he wants this gentle touch and he will follow it. Goodsir leans down and kisses him tentatively, resting the warmth of his mouth against Tom’s own for the barest moment before pulling away to study his eyes.

Tom feels himself swallow, nod. He is exhausted, uncertain. To acquiesce is only natural. He has no coin, after all, for a man to whom he now owes a debt. He only hopes Goodsir will be gentle with him, and kind.

Goodsir stands straight again and undoes his flies. If Tom had any lingering doubts about the transactional nature of this, despite its softness, Goodsir crushes them when he says in a small, bitter voice, “One great kindness for another.” 

Humiliated, Tom is, and dismayed, but not entirely repulsed. His body, at any rate, stirs itself, for there is in him a boy who takes delight in pleasing his elders—not, of course, that Goodsir is more than fifteen years his senior but he is, and has always been since he was a boy visiting him with John, a kind of authority from whom praise was not easily won. Even when his brother succeeded in beating him at chess, his greatest reward was a dip of the head and a shy grin. But getting his cock sucked, apparently, is a different matter altogether. He whines as Tom takes him onto his tongue and suckles his way forward—whines and rolls his hips, strokes his hair.

“There we are,” he says softly, “just slow and gentle—that’s a sweet boy.” The coaxing words and the way he strokes his neck sends a little molten swirl through the base of his gut, down through his thickening cock. “Bright and obedient thing that you are—I knew you’d be good at this but I’d no idea you’d be— _oh!_ —that, do that again. You clever lad, that’s perfect—you’re perfect…” 

No one’s ever praised him like this before. He’s relatively inexperienced, in fact, with this particular act, mostly following the rhythm Goodsir sets with his hips and his hand on the back of his neck, but it seems to please him. This, in turn, pleases Tom. Lushly, extravagantly. Just being told he is good. He finds himself stonily hard, his body buzzing and tense, and wants badly to take hold of himself but for the fear of distracting himself from the task at hand. Still, he can’t resist palming himself through his trousers. 

Goodsir spots this and gives him a soft smile. “You like this? Mmm, lovely—then you can touch yourself if you want to, I think that’s beautiful. _You’re_ beautiful—ah, there you go, let me see…what a lovely prick you’ve got. Beautiful from head to toe, you always have been…” His hand on his prick and the kindnesses on Goodsir’s lips reinforce one another, like a wheel of sweet heat, and soon his own climax is building itself up from deep within and, with a quiet grunt (conditioned as he is to go about these things in near silence) he finishes on his own fist and on the opened flies of his own trousers.

“Oh,” Goodsir is saying, barely coherent, “oh, I’ve never—had a lad come during—it pleases you, then, to service me—what a gift you are, Tom, I wish I’d known what a, what a—prize you are…” His words break apart into a sort of whining and panting, a rhythm. Then his hips stutter and halt and he grips the back of Tom’s neck, pressing him into place. With a long, high whimper, he spills, filling Tom’s throat. “Beautiful,” he murmurs. “Beautiful, beautiful boy.”

When it is over, Tom collapses onto the worn sofa and sleeps, dreaming of John and chess and the ocean rolling in and in and in upon itself.


	3. Chapter 3

“How’d you like a little house by the sea? A little cottage?” 

Tom tilts his head up at Goodsir as he speaks. “I don’t know,” he says at last. “I’ve never thought about it.”

It’s a pale, bright morning, chill outside their bed, and Tom lies with his head on Goodsir’s chest, blankets tucked up around his chin. 

“Maybe a little house by the sea,” he adds, so as not to offend. 

Two months have passed and Tom has stayed with Goodsir in his small apartment above and adjoined to the brothel by a steep, narrow stairway. The rooms are small and crowded and the ceilings low, but its clutter is expensive clutter, all dark wood and lush red and plant life—fiddle-leaf and tillandsia, pothos and a few different ferns that Goodsir tends with intent, silent solicitude. Their bedroom is directly above the largest brothel chamber and one night Tom wakes to the murmur of voices in the room below—not unusual. Then the bedsprings begin to creak, a rhythm like shallow wheezing breathing, also not unusual. But then Goodsir, who usually takes a pill that puts him under close to dead, stirs behind him. He hears him listening in the dark, hears his breath quickening. Then the moans below turn to strained, snatched whining, the sound of someone in pleasure and great pain at once, and Goodsir digs his fingers into Tom’s hips and hauls him up onto his knees. He slicks him with just enough spit to shove himself in. Tom trembles but does not cry out, for Goodsir’s hand is over his mouth in an instant. 

“Not one sound,” he snarls. “Not one fucking sound.” Tom keeps from whimpering by sucking on his fingers, one by one, just like he knows he likes, and Goodsir comes quickly, pulling out in time to scatter jism across his ass and hips. Afterwards he gives Tom the slowest and tenderest working over with his mouth, as though repenting.

It happens two or three more times over these two months but other than these brutal voyeuristic couplings—which have a truncated, surreal feeling like he’s dreamed them—Goodsir is a lovely man. He has neat, gentle ways and strives to make Tom happy in every attainable way. His libido is seemingly inexhaustible but otherwise he is deferential, even worshipful. Tom is vaguely aware that he’s _kept man_ now, and that if Goodsir wanted to chip and collar him he could. Toward this fact Tom is ambivalent: he’d only seen the kept at the heels of men much more conspicuously powerful than Goodsir, and they were invariably blinding things, too expensive to even look at. Like his gaze might sully them. That he himself is now one of this breed is laughable to him, but then again, he’d look no more absurd among them than Goodsir would among their keepers. 

But he _is_ powerful, Tom soon learns, and wealthy too. He owns two-thirds of the brothel beneath them, as well as controlling interests in several others. He is also well-loved and a little feared by the poor on whom he practices medicine for free, opening his office next to the brothel to them each Thursday and Sunday and doing what he can to treat the chronic problems of the wage-labor class: consumption, for one, though he has Tom inoculated against it at great personal cost. But there are other ailments too: men of thirty with lungs rendered intricately porous by acidic industrial gases, children who have inherited their mothers’ traveling cancers. Bones to set after fights and falls, hunger—this, too, he treats, and exhaustion, by lending out his cots by the hour. He apprentices Tom as a nurse and when the last patient has toddled out the door Goodsir takes him on his knee, murmurs fond filth into his ear, pushes him to his knees beneath his desk. 

But today is Saturday, day of rest, and Goodsir is apparently feeling curious. “What _have_ you thought about?” He presses. “What do you want for yourself?” 

“I’ve always worked too hard to want anything.” What he means but cannot explain: rising and resting in the dark between grinding shifts. You work like an animal and start to believe that’s what you are. You want to rest in a quiet place and to know your next meal has been earned. To these extravagant wishes you add, in your twenty-fourth year, the wish that your brother had lived. But none of these answers will appease Goodsir. He wants, _yes, a cottage by the sea_ , or _yes, a piano_ , or _yes, to learn Latin_. 

“Now that you needn’t work, I mean, what do you want for yourself?” He probes.

“I am happy with what I have.” He hears himself say it, and doesn’t believe it. Nor does Goodsir, who gives him that melancholy, deeply-creased smile of his, the one that doesn’t reach his eyes.

“I wish you were,” he says.

Tom throws his arm over his eyes, the inner crook of his elbow blocking out the light. “I’m happy if I have enough to eat,” he says. “If I get enough sleep.”

“You could sleep all day,” Goodsir says. “You could grow enormously fat if you wished. I would still love you.”

It’s the first time he’s said anything about love. He thinks about it a moment. “I don’t want to be enormously fat,” he says at last.

“Good. It wouldn’t suit you.” He reaches down and runs his fingers lightly over Tom’s ribs, which still jut out softly when he lies flat on his back. Tom wiggles under his touch, glad for it. He trails his fingers down, down, across the light, pale down on his belly and over the slow waking of his prick. If he is not happy, he’s not unhappy either, and that’s a change from his life so far. It is pleasant to be loved, one supposes… though, on the other hand, he wishes Goodsir hadn’t said it, for now he feels like he’s taken something that isn’t his.

***

There is, as it turns out, an actual cottage by the sea, and in his third month with him he takes him there. Only, it’s not an actual cottage but rather a sprawling ranch-style affair with floor-to-ceiling windows facing a tide that rolls up nearly to the sliding glass doors. It’s in a domed town, not far away—in fact, walk far enough along the shore at Docktown and you can see it at night, a kind of tiny egg-white shimmer on a far outcropping of coast. Like an alien ship had landed there.

Hickey comes too. The three of them are driven there in a rented car. They might have flown there in a matter of minutes but Goodsir wants to show Tom the countryside he’s never seen. It’s actually Hickey who seems more absorbed. He gazes out the window the whole way there, eyes soft and wide and a little sad. It is as though he is witnessing for the first time the existence of an entire landscape that he’d not quite believed was real before this, and now will be forever yearning for. Funny: poor men used to ramble, the tales of the old men say. Used to board ships and sail to far, strange corners of the world. Old John at the boarding house used to read aloud from a thick book about a whale, _Moby Dick_ , he thinks it’s called. And Hickey had begged Old John to read on, long after his voice had grown hoarse. His eyes softly brilliant in the low light. He even said he might learn to read, but Tom doubts he ever did. 

They pass hand-cobbled, black-roofed shacks and a sprawling waste dump on one side of the highway and on the other a brutal, Escheresque concrete building behind barbed wire. Goodsir lifts his hand from Tom’s thigh to point it out.

“There it is,” he says, shooting a meaningful look at Hickey. “Franklin Memorial. That’s where you’re going if you aren’t careful.” 

Hickey grins sarcastically, his teeth set different now around an empty mouth. Looks older. (He’s shown Tom what’s left, a mottled pink wedge ledged by a seam of glossy white.) Hickey has come with them to be delivered into the hands of a colleague of Goodsir’s, a specialist by the name of Stephen Stanley. 

_A specialist in what?_ Tom had asked.

_A specialist,_ Goodsir had repeated in a tone that forbade all further inquiry. Now he studies Hickey from the sides of his eyes. He is, even after it all, afraid for him.

Past the hospital and a dilapidated megachurch and the foundations of an old shopping centers, the last baleful remnants of the world before give way to sparse pine forest. Occasional glimpses of the coast through spidery, undernourished firs. Then even the trees thin to nothing but dune and black rocks snaking up from the silver water below, ringed by great dirty white birds, screaming as they wheel and dive.

“Seagulls,” Goodsir says simply.

Tom and Hickey regard him blankly. They’ve only ever seen them in books.

***

Even Goodsir is deferential to Dr. Stanley, who looms at least 6’4” of neat muscle and whose unsmiling face seems etched out of chill marble. His gaze is heavy, assessing; Tom finds himself squaring his shoulders and jutting out his chin when introduced like a soldier at inspection. Something amused and terribly dangerous flickers in the tall man’s eyes and he nods then at Goodsir as though ceding approval. 

Goodsir had explained ahead of time what would be expected of him. _Our arrangement,_ he’d explained, head tilted slightly in an expression of apology, _though informal as we practice it, carries with it certain… expectations. As far as the keeping up of appearances goes—amongst my peers, you understand._ Tom nodded, cheeks hot with shame and anger. _It won’t be every meal,_ he’d added, taking Tom’s hand in his. _Only when there are guests._

_Well, will there be guests often?_

_No, just one._

_After this weekend, I mean?_

Goodsir studied him, something hard in his eyes. _I’m not known for my lavish dinner parties._

And so he and Hickey find themselves facing one another from their cushions on the floor at the feet of their keepers. Hickey’s smiling inscrutably and watching Stanley talk, his eyes sharp, as though he expects something to happen. Goodsir slips Tom scraps from the table, which he accepts as daintily as he can. He wonders if he should take his cue from Hickey, who is quite lewd about it, sucking at Dr. Stanley’s fingers.

“Please,” Stanley scolds him, “as though you can accomplish much of satisfaction without a tongue.”

“You’d be surprised,” Goodsir says pleasantly. 

“I suppose it’s rather like lying with a woman. Not that you’re familiar with that.”

Goodsir shrugs and passes down a bit of seared salmon. This time Tom closes his lips just around the tips of his fingers and flicks his tongue over with the barest pressure. Goodsir glances down, pleased. Tom holds his gaze for a moment, lips parted, lets himself go pink: that look of being proud, adored. Praise in his eyes. He glances up at Dr. Stanley and sees a kind of curiosity there, and something mocking but not entirely unkind. He decides he does not like him, but wants very much to be liked by him. Out of an instinctive need for comfort he leans his head against the inside of Goodsir’s thigh and Goodsir’s hand comes to rest in his fine blond hair, as though he were a loyal dog. _Not far off,_ he thinks with a soft, numb kind of shame. 

Dessert is sticky and dense, a kind of bittersweet chocolate cake layered with a mild, frothy cream. Tom actually whimpers when he tastes this, for at the same moment Goodsir stirs in his chair and the smell of him, salt and musk and the faintest lilt of the soap he uses—it’s medicinal and faintly feminine, maybe eucalyptus and rosemary?—mingles with the slick of cream on his tongue, the earthen sweetness of the dark chocolate, and Tom realizes that he is harbored there, between Goodsir’s thighs and tasting of his body. Drawing in his index finger to the knuckle, he wonders if this is love’s beginning, or at least its clumsy proxy. It’ll do, at any rate. 

He hears Goodsir’s breath catch in his throat and looks up in time to see him swallow thickly. Tom flicks his tongue over the webbing between Goodsir’s ring and pinkie finger and lets his hand go with an almost inaudible whine. 

On his way out the door, Stanley claps Goodsir on the shoulder. “Harry,” he says, nodding toward Tom, “do try to hold onto this one.” And he’s gone with Hickey following behind, his new collar of translucent plastic glinting dully in the porch light. 

That night Goodsir tongues him loose for the first time and takes him face to face, carefully, breathing words of praise like prayer. Only after it’s over, and Goodsir snores in a sedated slumber, does it occur to Tom that he may not see Hickey again in this life.


End file.
